


you form a terror pack (and i'm aware of that)

by dalmatienne



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roller Derby, F/F, Nolan Patrick can't tie his shoelaces, Rule 63, harold..., it's about the rituals, it's not anachronistic if i don't say what time period it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23901892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalmatienne/pseuds/dalmatienne
Summary: “Can I help you?” TK snarks, both eyebrows hiked up in a way that has earned her many elbow checks to the ribs.The chick looks down her nose, long thick eyelashes fluttering. Red-bitten lips part to blow a florid pink bubble and TK can smell the chemical sweetness when it pops.“Yeah,” she says in this monotonous voice that seems almost at odds with her bubble gum and neon skates. She jams her stopper into TK’s thigh again, literally inches away from where it’dreallyhurt. “Tie ‘em.”
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 18
Kudos: 142





	you form a terror pack (and i'm aware of that)

**Author's Note:**

> If you recognize your name in this story, please, for the love of all things holy and good, click away now. This is entirely a work of fiction.
> 
> sometimes you wake up one morning after not reading/writing hockey fic for 8-9 months with the unquenchable desire to write a derby fic and you just have to roll with it.
> 
> shout out to [Em](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Springsteen) for allowing me to yell about this to her throughout the writing process, [Fic Clique](https://twitter.com/FicClique) for hosting writing sprints (aka the only reason i wrote anything), and Erica for patiently explaining roller derby penalties and gameplay to me, even when it was clear that i just wasn't getting it. i owe [JP](https://archiveofourown.org/users/japery) a huge debt of gratitude for cheerleading and beta reading and, most importantly, supplying me with many, many videos of the philadelphia flyers on roller skates. title is from "rill rill" by the sleigh bells.
> 
> suggested listening, simply for the vibe: Sleater-Kinney, Sleigh Bells, Wolf Alice, The Cranberries, No Doubt, Blondie

The first thing TK notices about the new girl are her feet.

Not in, like, a fuckin’ fetishist sort of way, or even in a pervy Victorian ankle-bone-is-connected-to-the-leg-bone-is-attached-to-the-thigh-bone-which-leads-to-her-Secret-Pleasure-Garden way, fuck _all the way_ off.

No, TK first notices her feet because they unceremoniously get dumped into her lap five minutes before the first practice of the season, dank grody roller skates and all.

TK’s in the middle of jawing off to the chick directly next to her—another new face and she didn’t catch her name or even give her a chance to share it, but that’s never stopped TK before--when wheels are suddenly jammed into her thigh. She barely manages to finish one sentence before slamming herself full force into another—

“Homeboy kept trying to tell me what a blind was as if I hadn’t been making my own since before he knew what his dick was for, and he--No, get your shitty skates off the merchandise, doll, these thighs are priceless works of art.”

—and shoves the skates back off her lap.

Less than five seconds later they’re plopped back onto her TK’s lap again, godless neon yellow and pink monstrosities that fully activate TK’s fight response. This time TK actually turns to face down and potentially throw down with the owner of the skates. She gets one good look at the offender and—

And okay. Alright.

Maybe the Victorians were onto something here, because the ankle bone does connect to the leg bone, and it _just kept getting better_. The girl is all long legs spread out over the shitty metal bench shoved to the back end of the warehouse the derby team uses to pad up, compression shorts riding up near the join of her hip and thigh. Black lines swirling in patterns across the pale skin of her quads catch TK’s attention before her eyes continue up in their best impression of an elevator on its way to the penthouse. And oh, what a sight for sore eyes that penthouse is.

Thick, loose brown hair still somewhat golden from the summer tucked back behind ears dotted with piercings, draped over thick shoulders. Cheeks glowing rosy in a way that makes TK think of hot chocolate and long days on a frozen lake. Blue, _blue_ eyes peering out under lowered eyebrows, paired with cupid-bow lips twisted down haughtily.

God, TK has never _seen_ such a perfect resting bitch face before. She can’t decide if she wants to get this chick off, or just piss her off.

She jiggles her thigh and flicks at the highlighter yellow of the skate boot.

“Can I help you?” she snarks, both eyebrows hiked up in a way that has earned her many elbow checks to the ribs.

The chick looks down her nose, long thick eyelashes fluttering. Red-bitten lips part to blow a florid pink bubble and TK can smell the chemical sweetness when it pops.

“Yeah,” she says in this monotonous voice that seems almost at odds with her bubble gum and neon skates. She jams her stopper into TK’s thigh again, literally inches away from where it’d _really_ hurt. “Tie ‘em.”

When TK doesn’t jump to her instructions immediately, the chick presses her skate in harder. TK looks down at the skates hooked across her thighs, and—

“You want me to tie your skates? Fuck no, I’m not your babysitter. You shoulda brought your mommy here to do ‘em for ya,” TK declares, and shoves them off with what she hopes is an air of finality.

The chick gives TK this glare that sets something alight deep in her gut and sends shivers down her thighs. She snaps her gum and TK can feel her heart skip a beat. Almost primly the chick swivels where she sits, facing the girl on the other side of her who had just finished adjusting her knee pads.

“Hey,” she says in a voice that is almost absurd in how civil and sweet she makes it, “can you please do me a favor?”

“You fucker,” TK says, mouth curling up entirely against her will in a smile. “Don’t get your fishnets in a twist, get back here.”

TK darts forward to pull one hideous skate back in her lap, spinning the chick back around. Her compression shorts catch on the bench, riding even higher, and TK takes an extra second or two to drink in that extra half inch of pale thigh. Then, she grips the laces close to the eyelet and yanks. She ties them tight, not fucking around with the fancy laceworks some of the other girls on the squad do. If the girl wants arch support or needs to keep her heel from slipping, she can do that on her own time. With a flourish, she flounces the bow, double knotted, and pulls the second skate up to repeat the process.

As soon as the second skate is tied to her satisfaction, TK pushes the skates off her knees, gently this time. Maybe she spends too much time trailing a finger or two up the chick’s surprisingly stubbled and muscled calf, but that’s between her and God.

When TK looks back up, the chick’s cheeks have gotten even rosier, but she’s examining her newly tied skates with a dismissive look that seems almost condescending. Strangely, it works on her face. Finally, she makes a small humming sound and pushes to her feet, quads and shoulders bunching thickly. TK watches the stretch and pull of the chick’s thigh tats.

They’re objectively bad tattoos. TK wants to put her mouth all over them.

“These’ll do, I guess,” the chick says, doing a lazy spin, hair still loose and swishing. TK drags her eyes up to meet the chick’s unimpressed stare. TK swallows hard and leers at her.

“No one does it like I can, baby.”

The chick rolls her eyes so hard she might strain something and dips low to pick up her helmet from where it leaned against her bag on the ground. She swivels on her heel to skate off to where the track is outlined in the middle of the cleared warehouse floor, almost fast enough for TK to miss the way her cheeks bunch like a chipmunk’s when she smiles. TK watches the muscles of her thighs work with her long strides.

When she gets up off the bench to follow, she nearly eats it when her own untied laces get caught up in her skate wheels.

*** * ***

It happens again the next week, the chick plotting down next to TK like her name’s engraved on that section of the bench and swinging her skates up into TK’s lap. The toe stop nearly bashes her in the nose and the wheels leave greasy, gritty tracks across her thighs.

It’s the best thing to happen to TK in days.

“Knew you’d come back,” she says and fingers out the knots in the laces.

“They stay tied the last time,” the chick drawls with a fluid shrug of her shoulders. Her jaw works like she’s chewing bubble gum again and TK finds it hard to look away from the sharp line of her jaw, how it contrasts with the soft baby fat of her cheek. “Impressive. I wanna see if you can do it again or if it was just luck.”

“Of course they stayed tied, I double knotted them. What do you take me for, a kindergartener?”

The chick gets this look on her face, all sly eyes and crooked lips, and TK has only known her for a cumulative hour and a half but she just _knows_ a dig at her height is coming her way, so she tugs at the chick’s skate just enough to scoot her down the bench and unbalance her. She throws a glare TK’s way from underneath her backwards snapback. TK smiles back sweetly.

“Or do you need me to walk you through it?” TK offers, voice nasally and obnoxious. She grips a ratty lace in both hands and smirks up at the chick. “First you go over and under again—”

“Oh my god.”

“Then you make a loop-de-loop and pull—”

“You are so obnoxious, I swear to god—”

But when TK looks up from doing a second loop, the chick’s cheeks are rosy and bright and she’s got this smile growing on her face that she’s not even trying to hide. TK’s eyes are caught on the red pull of the chick’s mouth. _That’s mine_, she thinks inanely, _that’s gonna be my smile_. Someone drops their skates with a clatter that echoes around the nearly empty warehouse and both TK and the chick startle, the chick rolling her eyes and snapping her gum. The smile is gone, pulled from her face and tucked away somewhere dark and safe, probably. TK pushes the finished skate out of her lap and gestures magnanimously at the one still resting on her thigh.

“Now it’s your turn. Show the class what you learned in school today.”

The chick just crosses her arms across her cropped tank top, showing off the black stretch of a sports bra across her ribs—and like, maybe she can share her lifting technique with TK because je_sus_ what a gun show—and rolls her skate across TK’s thigh again.

“No dice,” she says, like that’s a thing people say in the real world. “You still have to prove to me that your knots can stand another practice.”

TK shrugs and bites her lip as she bends back down to the skate laces. “I mean, like, you know what they say about fishing and eating and life and shit—” the chick makes a disbelieving noise, “—but whatever you want, Princess.”

The skate rolls off her thigh just as TK pulls the loops taut. A shadow falls over her when the chick glides to her feet and stands in front of TK. The view from where TK is sitting honestly could not be better. TK could live in this moment for eons.

“Princess?” the chick repeats, lips flattened out to an unimpressed line. “Really?”

TK tips her chin up and grins.

“Sorry, babe, didn’t realize you preferred to go by your first name. I’ll keep that in mind, Cinderella.”

The chick blinks at her, eyebrows ticking up. TK knocks one of her own skates out against the chick’s left toe stop.

“You know, since I’m getting to know your feet _so_ well.”

The chick claps a hand to her mouth just as a giggle escapes. It’s cute and sweet, and it sounds like candy tastes. TK wants to feel it against her lips, taste it on her tongue until she gets a sugar high.

“Oh my god,” TK says, pushing to her feet and drifting towards the chick. “I made your laugh. You think I’m funny!”

“As if.”

“You do!”

“Ugh, whatever.”

“_Spinderella cut it up one time,_” TK sings, laughing as the chick reaches out to push against her shoulder, bright red.

“Literally shut up.” She shifts her weight on her skates, rolling bad and forth a little but not away from TK. After gnawing on her lip she seems to come to a decision. “I’m Nolan. Patrick. But everyone calls me Patty.”

“Aww, Pattycakes,” TK says, pushing off with one foot to bump into the chick—Patty—and sling her arm around the other girl’s waist, arm brushing warm against where her mid drift’s peeking out from beneath her crop top. “See? Sharing is caring!”

“I regret literally everything about you,” Patty says and graciously snaps her gum right by TK’s ear. She takes her hat off and tosses it underhand to sit on the pile of stuff by the bench before shaking out her hair. Something citrusy and bright tickles at TK’s nose and she wants to push closer. Patty fingercombs her hair a few times and pulls it back into a ponytail low enough to sit under a helmet.

TK stares at the movement of Patty’s hands, the flash of her fingers and the chipped black polish on her short nails. After a few moments TK realizes that Patty is giving her an expectant look.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“Yeah, one sec, let me see if I can get it.” Patty licks her thumb and scrubs at TK’s face, slinging an arm around her shoulder so that TK’s half-caught in a noogie. She shrieks, wriggling and twisting on her skates, jabbing at Patty’s ribs until she breaks out of the hold. TK shakes her own cropped hair out of her eyes and glares over at Patty where she’s peering in closer to look at TK’s face. “Oh,” she says with a widening of her blue eyes, “my bad bud. Looks like it’s just what you look like. Fuckin’ tragedy.”

“So fucking rude, who even even invited you here?” TK bitches. She can hear the smile in her own voice, so fond it’s almost embarrassing. Like metal to a magnet, she feels herself pulled back to Patty, letting her skates drift until she bumps into Patty’s side. Their thighs brush, and TK likes to imagine that she can feel the hot press of the inked lines just above Patty’s knee burning into her own skin.

“_Fuck_ingobnoxious,” Patty repeats and TK lets herself be nudged up to the track just in time for G to blow the captain’s whistle.

*** * ***

Halfway through one of the hit drills, once the squad had run skating drills to G’s and coach’s satisfaction, Patty hipchecks TK hard enough to send her sprawling onto the dusty waxed floor. She looms over her as TK scrambles to her feet, ready to mouth off.

“_You’re_ fucking rude,” Patty says over her. Pushing off with one foot, she skates backwards, narrowing her eyes and quirking her lips, daring TK to follow her. TK’s never been one to back down from a dare, and she knows for a fact that she’s one of the fastest skaters on the squad, so she takes off after her. Patty’s smirk turns into a full blown grin and she smoothly twists until she’s skating forward, lengthening her stride.

It’s not the most beautiful skating TK’s ever seen, except Patty seems to be crafted from every idle daydream TK’s ever had, so it _is_. The flash of her tattoos as they follow the curves of the track, the shifting muscles in her long, long legs, _fuck_, her ass. TK could follow that ass anywhere: across the track, across the Delaware, into the fucking sun.

“_I’m_ fucking rude?” TK shouts to her, steadily gaining. “Really? What have I ever done to you? I tied your skates, Patrick!”

“You never told me your name,” Patty calls over her shoulder. “So it was either _fucking rude_ or _obnoxious pipsqueak_!”

Their teammates have all stopped their drills, milling around in the center of the track and alternating between shouting words of encouragement and sticking their feet into the track just high enough that TK has to jump over them. One of them, Haysie probably, whoops when she manages to hopscotch over three different skates.

With a burst of speed, TK gets low enough to plow her shoulder into Patty’s hip. Those long legs of Patty’s—on top of being absolutely fantastic to look at—give her a high center of gravity and TK’s actively forgotten about every aspect of high school physics except for the knowledge that the higher the center of gravity, the harder the fall. As soon as the hit connects, Patty loses her balance and falls, skidding across the floor on her elbow pads and that ass.

“Travis Konecny. TK,” TK adds as she rolls to a stop in front of the pile of Patty. She offers the check a hand up even though they’ve all been trained to fall and get to their feet hands-free. Something shivers deep inside her when Patty’s gloved hand takes hers. “Miss Janet if you’re nasty.” 

Patty rolls her eyes and snaps her hum and TK’s heart beats so loud she can barely hear G yelling at them for being _showoffy drama queens, jesus fuck, this is the real world not goddamn RollerJam!_

*** * ***

On a good day, Philly traffic is a bitch and a half. It snarls across the highways down the downtown streets, snagging on the exits and main drags. TK read once that Philly traffic had been rated the 69th worst in the world. Which, like, _nice_, but also, obviously, _not_.

So of course, on this bad day, when it’s raining and everyone’s driving like they’ve completely forgotten what to do when the pavement is wet, and when she’s already running late for practice, Philly traffic is a goddamn nightmare. There are more accidents on 95 than there are tigers left in the wild, TK is willing to put good money on that. It’s the worst kind of stop and go traffic and even sing-yelling along to Shania won’t make it better.

Only by the grace of Shania does she skip into the parking lot in time for practice. Falling out of the truck cab with one elbow pad on and the other between her teeth, TK hopes she locked the doors even though she knows nothing in there is worth stealing, even in this part of town. She hops to the side door of the warehouse, yanking first one knee pad up and then the other, slamming open the door like she’s some romcom fucker on the warpath to stop a wedding, and—

Oh.

Patty’s already there, looking up wide-eyed in her direction as the door ricochets off the wall and back into TK’s face. She’s sprawled across what TK now thinks of as “Patty’s place” on the metal bench, and her skates are—

TK suddenly feels something. Something bad? Yeah, bad. She feels bad.

Seeing Pats stretched across the bench with her scuffed up neon skates in Haysie’s lap, lips pursed mid-bubble, brown hair falling in a curtain across the collar bones shown off by her ever-present tank top, knees and thighs flexes a little as Kev tightens the laces…

Something gross bubbles up in TK’s stomach, like the emotional equivalent of when she thought she’d gotten food poisoning from the Southwest totchos she and Law’d cooked up during one of their smoke sessions a few summers back. Law’d been fine, so it might’ve just been a bug, even if Law was the one who—. Whatever. Still fuckin’ gross. Gross, and roiling, and absolutely disconcerting.

Heartburn? Is she old enough to have heartburn yet?

“You’re late, Teeks!” G hollers from the track, swinging the whistle around her pointer finger. “You owe me laps!”

“And you owe me lunch!” Haysie yells amiably enough. She pushes Patty’s skates off her lap and stands to stretch out her calves.

“Then feel free to eat my ass,” TK yells back. Kev gives her a dumb hurt puppy look and TK realizes that her voice came out more dark and biting than she had planned. She winces half-apologetically at Haysie even as something is gnawing at her insides, chewing at her stomach as viciously as Patty chews her gum.

She flings herself to the bench a few seats down from Patty and gets her own skates on, tying the laces fast and messy.

TK’s the last on the track and she falls down after three of her punishment laps, tripped up by a loose lace.

She’d forgotten to double knot her skates.

*** * ***

After that, TK makes a point of getting to the next practice early. If she ever remembered to ring up her mom to tell her about what she was getting up to with her life, TK’s sure her mom would be shocked to hear that she was willing to get up early for something other than fishing or hunting.

It’s whatever, it’s fine.

Anything to make that gnawing disappointment heartburn stay away.

Their first practice after what TK thinks of as the time that Haysie usurped her as Chief of Skate Tying, she gets to the warehouse early enough that none of the other people on the squad are there yet and the parking lot is empty. She loiters around outside the side door, looking sketch in her ratty, torn-up jeans and orange beanie, an oversized flannel wrapped around her waist. A couple walking their dog on the sidewalk by the warehouse look at her suspiciously, crossing to the other side of the road when she sticks her tongue out at them.

Yeah, TK’s a delinquent, it’s great.

You can’t get heartburn if you’re still young enough to be a delinquent, TK is pretty sure.

It doesn’t take long for TK to get bored enough to consider catching one of the pigeons pecking around by the dumpster. Just to see if she can. The stupid things are cooing and trilling and just begging to be messed with. There’s one with only one foot and more bald spots in its improbably rust-colored feathers than an aging NHL lineup that TK thinks she has a shot of getting. She’s wily, she’s fast, she knows how birds think: it’ll be a piece of cake.

Just as TK’s about to grab the thing in both hands, visions of lifting it into the air like the fucking Lion King dancing in her head, a skate bag thumps to the cement between her and the pigeon. The pigeon takes off in a flurry of pizza grease orange puffed feathers, flying up into TK’s face. TK throws her arms up in front of her eyes to shield herself from pigeon self-defence-shit and falls straight on her ass.

“I worry about you. Have you gotten your rabies shot?”

TK pushes her mussed up beanie out of her eyes to glare up at G. G ignores her, pulling out a ring of keys and starting to flip through for the one to the warehouse. Ginger curls escape her bandanna to fall into her face.

“Pigeons can’t get rabies,” TK says, then pauses. She turns her glare to the janky pigeons, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Can they?”

Puffed up as much as it can be, the pigeon eyes TK from its new perch across the parking lot. Sunlight glints off its beady eyes.

It doesn’t _look_ rabid.

G shoves the side door open. “Please. Please get inside before the raccoons come to reclaim their own.”

TK pushes herself to her feet and dusts her palms off on the seat of her jeans. She cheerfully flips off her captain with both middle fingers and makes her way inside, skate bag looped around her elbow.

Since she’s so early, G makes her go around to set up the cones and obstacles on the track. In terms of ways to get TK to show up to practice early, it seems like more of a disincentive than anything else, but TK’s allowed to fuck around without supervision long enough to put the cones in ridiculous patterns. It’s fucking hard to make the shape of a middle finger using rubber orange discs, but she manages well enough until G chases her off the track and back onto the bench. Whatever, TK thinks as G wrangles Hartsy out to finish up the job, that was TK’s plan anyway.

She jaws off to the other skaters, ripping into Beezer’s new tattoo (“What sort of reputable tattoo artist works on a twelve year old? I can’t believe your fake even works out here.”), tugging at the dangling earring Coots forgot to take off, and pestering G into showing off the latest picture in her billfold of little baby Gavin—

“Hand to God, G, Gav is gonna be the next Gerber baby. Fucking sardonic ideals of babies right there.”

“Platonic ideal,” G corrects smugly as she tucks the picture back into her wallet.

—until Patty walks into the warehouse, looking tired and bitchy despite the fact that it’s like four in the afternoon, what the fuck. Worst of all, she still looks like a fucking dream, greasy ponytail, loose tank, murder eyes and all.

TK doesn’t even give Patty the opportunity to say hello to the rest of the squad—not that she would with that bad attitude she’s rocking—before she yanks at the belt loops of her high waisted jeans until Patty gives in and plops down on the bench next to her. Patty tones down the murder eyes when she gives TK a bemused look but bless her, she’s still cat-caught-in-the-rain pissy.

“Hello?” she says, look at TK like she’s a fucking weirdo and not a fucking gift. Appropriately, TK punches her in the arm, like _fuck off_ but also like _hi_.

“Get changed and get your skates on,” she says, nudging at Patty’s skate bag. “We don’t have all day. Hey, what would you do if you caught a pigeon?”

Patty blinks at her before snorting, kicking off her old vans and shimmying out of her jeans to reveal the compression shorts underneath. Unzipping her bag, she pulls out her ubiquitous eye-searing neon yellow and pink skates and shoves the jeans back in their place. TK watches her a normal human amount.

“Fuck off, _I’m_ late. Have you met an alarm clock?” She checks the tread and position of the wheels almost casually before shoving her feet into the skates. “And I’d like. Dunno, lift it up like Simba or some shit. What would you do, eat it? Add it to your Mount Rushmore of birds there, bud?”

TK brings her arm up obligingly, flexing her bicep like, _welcome to the gun show babe_, and says, “Yeah alright, rose gun, come talk to me when all your ink stylistically meshes,” and pulls up Patty’s gross-ass skates into her lap.

Patty makes this—noise, TK doesn’t know what, something like a surprised yip. But when TK looks up to check on her, Patty’s face is blank, lips pressed a little tightly together even as two spots of red on her cheeks stand out against her pale skin. When their eyes meet, she raises her eyebrows at TK and nods down to her skates, all like, _get on with it_. TK pokes her tongue out and gets down to business.

When she finishes, she leans over the skates and into Patty’s business, ignoring the fluttering in her stomach and the way her throat feels almost itchy from the nearness.

“I told you, Pats,” she says real low, tracking Patty’s eyes with her own. Dull, pretty blue eyes blink down at her. “No one does it like I can, babe.”

And—yeah, there it is. That sweet flush spreading from Patty’s cheeks and trickling down her neck, pooling along the neckline of her tank.

Patty’s face is flat and emotionless underneath the blush but when she drawls out, “Yeah, Teeks, I’ll keep that in mind,” there’s enough of a hint of a smile in her voice that TK puffs up in pride, grinning. Patty snaps her gum at TK like an inside joke, tongue darting out to lick her lips when the bubble pops.

*** * ***

It becomes a thing.

Not like, a _thing_ thing, but like, not _not _a thing.

Practices and scrimmages and bouts, TK is there early to pull Patty’s skates into her lap, pluck at her fishnets like guitar strings, and tie her laces so tight Patty has to pick at the bows with her blunt fingernails for a solid two minutes afterwards.

Patty alternates between bitching at her and looking smug the whole time, but like, that’s what makes it so great.

*** * ***

TK is good at what she does. She’s quick, she’s fast, she’s persistent, and she’s got an ass and a mouth that just don’t quit. She knows all this because of how many times the players on the opposing squads always try to clothesline her and, when that fails—as it always does—when they try to punch her in the face.

An elbow had caught her in the mouth at the beginning of the second half of the bout when TK was getting a little mouthy—

“Fucking bitch ass squid squad!” she’d hollered as he’d slingshotted her way through the pack, gloved hand gripped tight around Ghosts, an elbow driving into the ribs of the nearest red jersey to her, “Eat my shorts, Larkin!”

—and the sweet soreness just adds to the victory thrumming through her veins. A good bout is always made great with a little blood to grease her wheels, as she always says.

“You’re disgusting,” Patty says as she rings the sweat out from her jersey before tossing it aside. Just in her sports bra and compression shorts and tights, she bends over to tackle her laces.

“I’m _right_,” TK insists. Her speech is garbled through the wet rag pressed to her freshly split lip, and she’s mumbling nearly as much as Patty does on a good day. “This,” she slurs as she leans way into Patty’s space, “is just proof that they hate us ‘cuz they ain’t us.”

“Get your freak out of here,” Patty groans with a truly excessive amount of eyerolling. She reaches up with one sweaty, bare hand to push TK away by the cheek—albeit gently, and on the other side of TK’s split lip. Her palm is clammy and rank, and she smells like a pack of aggressive, unwashed derby players shoving at each other for over an hour of gameplay. TK feels a spark go down her spine and settle in her hips. She allows herself to fall back onto her designated bleacher seat.

They get their skates off and packed away while G goes around the room bumping dists and eyeing up the new bruises, offering each patch of angry red-purple skin either a whoop of victory or a sympathetic wince. TK wipes off her war paint with the now grossly-skip-warm damp rag and tosses it into the communal laundry basket along with hers and Patty’s jerseys. Provy drew the short straw this week and has to drag their combined blood, sweat, and tears to the sketchy laundromat two blocks over. 

Once she gets her ratty old sweatshirt on and threads her stub of a ponytail through her snapback, TK turns back to Patty and whistles.

“Fuck, bud, you sure are committed to a theme, there.”

Patty doesn’t even look up from where she’s tucking her laces into the sides of her vans to give TK the middle finger.

TK snorts and heaves herself to her feet, joints aching with the fresh feeling of a bout well-fought. Her stomach rumbles and she mourns the fact that it’s a school night and most of the squad has to get home in time for bedtime, either theirs or their kid’s. She could really go for their usual post-bout bacchanalia at whatever dive bar is closest.

“God I’m starving,” she whines, bumping up against Patty’s shoulder. “You got any plans after this, babyface?”

Adorably, Patty’s eyebrows draw in as she glares up at TK. “Babyface?” she says, shrugging into a brightly colored windbreaker right over her sports bra and shouldering her bag. She straightens up and it’s still a trip how much TK has to crane her neck to look into Patty’s face.when she stands.

“Yeah,” TK says, “you’re a child—”

“I’m not even two years younger than you, Teeks, fuck off.”

“Literally an infant.”

“Literally I could step on you.”

“Is that a promise? Anyway,” she barrels on when Patty’s soft mouth drops open and her big dumb eyes blink at her, “you wanna get sushi? Mama needs protein.”

Patty’s mouth closes and she titles her head to study TK suspiciously. TK gives her her winningest smile. “Sure,” Patty drawls out, and abruptly turns to the warehouse exit. TK fistpumps and bends to gather her shit, stopped only by Patty calling over her shoulder, “By the way, your lip’s bleeding again.”

“Fuck!”

*** * ***

“This pizza is bigger than a three year old!”

“Fuck that, this pizza is bigger than _Teeks_”

“Hop off my dick, Jake,” TK says through half a mouthful of the pizza she had ripped into as soon as it’d reached the table the squad had commandeered. The cheese stretches, grease sparkling in the busted-ass lights of the shitty arcade-pizzaria, until TK snaps it with a flick of her wrist. Throwing her head back, she dangles the slice above her head until she can gobble up the drooping strands.

“Truly disgusting,” Patty says, her mouth a smear of marinara. Her gaze is hooked on the lower half of TK’s face and TK raises her hand to wipe the grease off onto the back of her hand.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Patty confirms. Bubble gum pink, her tongue darts out to lick at the tomato sauce at the corner of her mouth. TK watches, uncaring of the grease slipping down her own wrist. “You’ve got a fucking trash mouth.”

“You got any better ideas for what I should do with my mouth?”

“Maybe,” Patty says, and shoves the corner of her crust into her mouth.

“Jesus Christ,” G says somewhere behind them, but TK is too busy watching the slouch of Patty’s body across the vinyl seat across from her, shoulders wide in her flannel and breasts pushing against her shitty homemade crop top. There’s a logo on the shirt, something in neon colors and bold shapes. For neither love nor money would TK be able to say what the shirt was actually advertising other than the fact that Patty had foregone a bra that day.

TK eats three more slices and kicks Ghost’s ass at Duck Hunt.

She still leaves the joint starving.

*** * ***

They’re on the same wavelength. They’ve gotta be. TK knows she can be an idiot, sometimes, but it feels obvious, inescapable. You don’t just tie some chick’s skates for half a derby season because you don’t vibe.

Only.

Only TK doesn’t know what wavelength they are on, exactly. Talking with Patty, being near Patty, it feels like surfing the radio channels. A vibe can start off feeling like one thing and end up being something completely different. Like landing on a dope bass beat and some sick guitar chords only to find out halfway through the song that she’d been headbanging to the Christian rock station the whole goddamn time.

So like, she doesn’t want to make the moves on Patty if it turns out that they’d been jamming along to _Jesus is My Homeboy_ the entire time, you know.

It’s like. It’s rough, a little.

*** * ***

Patty doesn’t show for one practice, then two, then misses a whole ass bout and TK goes maybe a little bit insane.

“What if she’s dead?” she wails into the receiver as soon as the ringing is interrupted by a click, twisting the phone cord up in one finger until it gets hopelessly knotted and tangled and the tip of her finger turns blue. “What if she tried going skating but didn’t tie her laces right and no one was there to make sure they were tight and she tripped into oncoming traffic?”

A baby screams over the line and G sounds exhausted when she asks, “Who is this?”

“Fuck off, G, you know how it is.”

“Ah, TK, a pleasure as always. Such a delight to hear from one of my teammates on one of the few days I have away from the track.”

“G, please,” TK whines. The cord is just a ball of rubbery wire, looking like some sort of off-brand Pokemon or D-grade 60s horror monster. “She...something could have happened. Does anyone know? Has anyone heard from her?”

“Oh, I see. This is about Patty. Have you tried calling her?”

“Have I tried to do what now?”

A long, drawn out sig echoes across the wire and the weight of so much judgment drops onto TK, flattening her where she’s sprawled out across her couch.

“Call her,” G says, carefully enunciating each word. “On the telephone.” The baby’s crying gets louder and G starts whispering French nonsense to Gav, low and melodical. TK whines again, high and obnoxious, drowning out the baby.

“I don’t have her number.”

“You are useless. Absolutely useless. It’s important to me that you know this. Do you? Can you admit this?”

TK groans but G shushes her, talking to her like she’s the baby.

“No, I need to hear this.”

“I’m useless,” TK mutters as she picks at her cuticles. On G’s end, Gav shrieks once, as if in grumpy baby agreement.

“Shh, shh,” G coos, “we can’t tell Teeksy everything. It’s important to let her learn things on her own.” To TK she says, “Look it up in the goddamn directory,” and hangs up.

TK groans and slams down the handset. Directory? Fuck, that must be in one of the packets of paper that Coots handed out every practice or two. TK swivels her head to look at the table she and Sanny had shoved up against the wall by the front door. It was covered in what archeologists could estimate to be epochs of paperwork and unopened mail. She groans again. Sliding off the couch, TK makes her way to the table and begins to sort out the envelopes and sheafs of paper.

She makes her way through approximately eight million misaddressed Delia’s catalogs, two hundred REI mailings, expired pizza coupons from last decade, a solid twenty bills she or Sanny only probably paid on time, and a package from her mother that used to contain either homemade candies or new fishing lures before she unearths the directory. It’s spiral bound and everything, which TK thinks is pretty impressive. It also has a cherry red juice stain on the cover.

It smells like Kool-Aid.

Flopping back down on the sofa with the directory, TK opens it to the P section, finds that whatever dumbass put the thing together sorted their names alphabetically by first names, and then flips back to the N’s. Nolan. There it is, nudged up between Nikki and Lindy—fuck, TK really doesn’t know her teammate’s first names, does she?

Other than Sanny, of course. That’s a gimme.

TK pulls the phone closer to her and dials the number as slowly as she can stand, double and triple checking each digit. She waits for the call to connect and her heart leaps to her chest when it starts ringing.

It rings six times, her heart beating faster and faster, until a faint click echoes down the line and a voice she’s been dreaming about for months says in that gruff, bitchy voice, “Hello?”

And—

TK slams down the handset with a painful clacking noise.

“Fuck me,” she says, glaring down at the phone.

That could have definitely gone better.

She thinks again of G calling her useless and picks up the phone again, dialing in each number. It only rings two times before the call is answered.

“Listen,” Patty growls down the line in a voice that sets TK squirming on the couch, crossing one leg other the other, “_asshole_, I don’t want to subscribe to your goddamn newspaper, I’ve already called to cancel twice—”

“Hey,” TK says, and nearly kickers herself at how pathetically hopeful her voice sounds, tripping over just one syllable. She clears her throat and starts again, “Hey, Patty. What’s—how’s it hanging?”

There’s a beat of silence on the other line before Patty says, “...Teeks?”

TK is about to die, absolutely perish and sink into the couch where she will molder forever, or at least until Sanny drags the couch out to the curb. Patty sounds so soft, so different from when she was ready to eviscerate a telemarketer. All that, just for TK.

“Who else could it be, babe?”

“My grandma,” Patty says, just flat enough that TK isn’t quite sure if she’s joking or if she’s expecting TK to laugh. And suddenly, TK finds herself in the unique position of not knowing what to say. Years of being yelled at for never shutting up, and fucking no she doesn’t have words.

“So,” Patty says after the quiet has gone on long enough to be awkward, “Is there a reason why you called or did you get that hard up for an audience?”

“Must I have a reason? Can’t I ring up my favorite teammate for a chat with no other interior motives?”

“Interior,” Patty mocks, just like TK thought she would. Then, “Favorite?”

“Second favorite,” TK says quickly, “behind Hartsy.”

Hartsy’s a safe choice. Everyone loves Hartsy.

“Oh. Of course. So?”

“So?”

“So hy did you call?”

“Right. Just checking on you. Haven’t seen you in a while. Feels weird not…” TK pauses and tries to think of what to say that won’t leave her too vulnerable, too emotionally vulnerable. She picks the stupidest possible thing she could think of, probably. “Feels weird not giving shoe-tying lessons before every practice.”

“Sorry,” Patty says, absolutely not. “I’m guessing you’ve been banned from all public schools in the area, so you can’t get your shoe fix there either huh. Although you’d think you would fit right in at the elementary schools.”

“You think you’re funny, huh? Just a real barrel of laughs, Pattycakes and her height jokes.”

“My bad, I know you’re sensitive about your elf heritage. Couldn’t cut it as a cobbler, have to get your shoe rush when you can.”

“Sorry we can’t all be taller than the Franklin Bridge and make dresses out of the Ringling Brothers’ tents.”

“Whatever, Teeks. If your routine is that thrown off by not tying laces, just tie someone else’s. Haysie’ll probably let you. She’d love it.”

“It’s not the same,” TK says. She’s been pacing the entire time, as much as the phone cord will let her. She feels amped up, high on the banter. “I need your eye-searingly neon yellow dank skates in my life, baby.”

“Eye-searing? Like you’re one to talk. You literally hand-painted your skates camo.”

“It’s tactical, Pats. So the other team doesn’t see me coming.”

“I regret answering the phone.”

“Do you?” TK asks and immediately wants to pluck the words out of the air and cram them back into her mouth.

“No,” Patty says without hesitation, syrupy soft and warm.

“Oh,” TK says, “Good.”

The silence this time is comfortable. She can hear the hum of her fridge, the ghost whispers of the phone system down the line. The soft in and out that she’s sure is Patty’s breathing. The familiarity soothes the aggravated buzzing of her brain, the constant itch to go somewhere or do something. It feels like being wrapped in a blanket, eating maple snow candy she’d demanded her brother make with her after she’d read a book about it when she was eight.

She wonders how much warmed she’d feel if Patty was here with her.

“Are you? Okay, that is,” TK adds awkwardly before she can let her mind drift further.

Patty’s quiet on the other line, so quiet TK almost thinks she’s been hung up on until she can focus in on that same in and out pattern. “I will be,” she says finally, “I think.”

TK’s hackles go up. “Are you hurt?” She wracks her brain, trying to remember the last time she saw Patty, if she was limping, who the last bout had been against. “Did one of the fuckers on Blue Steel City Babes get in a dirty hit? Who the fuck do I need to take out? Swear to god, I’ll drive four hours and do it, Patty.”

“Calm down, Cujo,” Patty drawls over the phone. TK resolutely does not calm down. “It’s just a...a head thing. Migraines, I guess. It gets fucky sometimes, but it’s been like this for a while. Comes and goes, you know? You don’t have to fuck anyone up over this.”

But it’s fucking you up, TK very carefully doesn’t say. “You sure? I’ll take on Malkin for you, don’t think I won’t.”

Patty laughs, and it does sound more tired than usual, but candy sweet enough to TK to ants to see it, to taste it. “My very own attack raccoon.”

“Fuck off, Pats. I just want you back so I can… It fucks up my routine, you know, not having your disgusting laces to tie.”

“Oh, I am _so_ sorry to inconvenience you, Ms. Konecny.”

“You should be. Do you…Will you be there for practice next week? Will your head be okay?”

Patty makes a humming noise over the phone. “Maybe. Probably. I’ll try.”

“Good. Can…can I keep calling you? Just to make sure you’re okay. I’d hate to have to find a new pair of gnarly-ass skates to tie. Haysie’s just won’t cut it.”

“Sure, Teeks.” TK can _hear_ the eyeroll over the line, just as well as she can hear the smile Patty saves just for TK. “You can keep calling me.”

*** * ***

In an embarrassingly short amount of time, TK has Patty’s number memorized and the directory is once more lost under the pile of USPS detritus. She doesn’t call too much, she doesn’t think, because Patty never tells her to stop calling. If TK was really bugging her, Patty wouldn’t hesitate to bitch her out over it. It’s reassuring, almost.

They stay up late too many times for TK to count, leaving her groggy and sleep-blurred for work the next day. It’s not like the conversations are deep or anything, but TK treasures every little crumb of information she weasels out of Patty: stories about her sisters, the lake her family goes to every summer, her own fishing trips TK yearns to one-up. When Patty lets slip that she’s actually from Winnipeg—not like she has the nasally twang of a homegrown Philly accent—TK laughs at her and calls her nothing but Prairie Girl for a solid fifteen minutes until Pats hangs up on her. She calls back five minutes later, like she thinks that’s enough time to make a point, but TK just snorts and calls her Laura Ingalls Wilder.

“Who the fuck is that?” Patty demands, monotonous and staticky over the call.

“Fuck, babe, did you not have a real childhood?” TK says, leaning back into the couch and using her forefingers to fling a scrunchie across the room and onto the brim of Sanny’s snapback. “Little House on the fucking Prairie.”

“Damn, Teeks, I didn’t know you could read,” Sanny snipes and launches the scrunchie back at her.

“Joke’s on you bitch, they made that shit into a tv show. I didn’t have to read shit,” TK hollers, and punctuates the statement by nailing Sanny with a decorative pillow. “And this is an A-B conversation, so you better C yourself out.”

Patty laughs, sharp and staticky across the wire even as Sanny yelps, “I _live_ here!” and launches an offensive so intense the phone cord gets pulled from the wall in the ensuing tussle.

They stay on the line so long that Sanny bitches at TK about tying up the line and racking up their phone bill, even though TK knows that they have free nights and weekends.

TK’s favorite part of nearly every call is when they stay on the line so long that they both go sleepy slow, breathing in and out into their receivers and giggling nonsense sentences and chirps. She falls asleep on the couch more than once, handset tucked between her cheek and the couch cushion.

*** * ***

TK spends most of the lead up to Patty’s first bout back with the team going absolutely feral on anyone who looks at her wrong. As soon as Patty gets to the warehouse, TK drapes herself over Pats’ back, refusing to detach herself even as Patty elbows at her to change into the jersey. Finally she shoves TK down to the bench and heaves her skates into her lap to be tied. Popping a pink bubble in TK’s face, she then settles in to get her warpaint on.

During warmups, TK pingpongs off her teams, hipchecking Haysie a little too hard and nearly sending Coots sprawling. When she starts tripping up Ghost on purpose, G pulls her aside, her face twisted up in that frown that means she’s pissed TK has forced her to wear her parenting hat to the track.

“Listen,” G says, settling both hands on TK’s shoulders like she’s calculated the likelihood of TK trying to escape this conversation and doesn’t like what the math spat out. “I need you to think about what I’m going to ask you, and I know this is a big request. Can you handle the jammer star tonight?”

“What?”TK squawks, pushing with one foot only to be stopped by the hands on her shoulders. “What the fuck do you mean, of course—”

G shakes her. “Shut up, Teeksie, and _think_ about it. Can you handle the jammer star tonight? You’re all over the place. We don’t need any penalties holding us back against the Monumental Rollergirls. Will having Patrick back on the track with you distract you?”

“Patty won’t—”

The sigh G heaves is enormous and just a little too close to being disappointed. “TK,” she says gently after visibly counting to five. “I am saying this as your captain and as your friend. You are a goddamn mess when it comes to Patty. An actual idiot sandwich. Dealing with you the past few weeks with Patty out has been hell. Can you promise me that you’ll focus on the game and not go postal if someone so much as sneezes on Patty?”

TK bites her lip and fidgets, uncomfortable with the unfamiliar sensation of someone perceiving her. Totally against her own volition, her eyes drift over to where Patty is stretching out her quads along the outside of the track. She sees TK staring at her and flips her the bird. TK’s heart might flip in response.

“Yeah,” TK says, looking back to G. “Yes, I can do that. I promise.”

G looks at her for a moment more before rolling her eyes and shoving the panty into TK’s chest. “For what it’s worth, you’re both idiot sandwiches.”

TK takes the panty and fits it over her helmet.

Yeah, she’s got this. She’ll be chill about this.

*** * ***

TK is absolutely not chill about this.

Five minutes into gameplay of the first half, midway through a jam, TK is fighting her way through the pack, a few seconds’ of battle away from being lead jammer, when out of the corner of her eye she sees Patty take a dirty fucking elbow from goddamn Wilson of all people and go down. Patty goes sprawling across the track, tripping up a couple of the players not quick enough to jump over her. TK sees a skate slam into Patty’s helmet and she abruptly loses all higher thinking ability.

Blockers bounce into her when she decelerates, weaving back through the pack until Wilson’s just behind her. TK hooks a skate around Wilson’s ankle and tugs as she plows her elbow into Wilson’s diaphragm. Wilson makes a disgusting grunting noise as she flails and goes down hard, grasping for and missing TK. TK shakes her skate loose and pushes to make up for lost time, and—

The jam referee blows his whistle.

“Penalty to Number Eleven for illegal use of elbows. Thirty seconds in the box.”

“Are you fucking blind, ref?” TK yells as skates off the track. She’s shaking with anger, muscles contracting and vibrating from her shoulders to the tips of her fingers. “You lose your whistle when 43 did the same fucking thing to 19? Finally find it stuck up your ass, just like your head?”

The ref looks down his nose at her, cheeks blotchy and salt and pepper ‘stache ruffled. “I’d watch myself if I were you, Number Eleven.”

“Why fucking bother since you seem more than happy to watch my ass yourself!”

The penalty box, when TK finally skates there, is just a metal folding chair shoved to the side of the announcer’s table. She throws herself into the chair hard enough to skid it a few inches across the floor and barely manages to stop herself from flipping off the announcers when one leans into the mic and yells, “We’ve got a p-p-p-p-p-p-p-power jam!” and the other triggers the airhorn sound effects.

As the players and refs reset the jam, Wilson skates by. She winks at TK and blows a kiss. TK wraps her fingers around the edges of the metal chair until they bite into her palms even through her gloves. What a fucking jackass.

When she makes it back to the bench, G rips the panty off her helmet without a word, handing it off to Hartsy. TK tries to catch Patty’s gaze, see if she really is alright after that collision, but Patty refuses to look at her, and oh.

Oh, TK fucked up big time.

As soon as the timer buzzes for halftime, all of her teammates abandon her with knowing and pitying looks on their faces. TK remains seated, kicking at her skates and biting her lip and hoping that maybe, if she looks pathetic enough Patty will forgive her. Familiar neon green and pink roll to a stop in front of her and TK slowly drags her eyes up to look at Patty.

She’s got her arms crossed but more than that, her face is set in a scowl of genuine anger. Not her usual bitchy face that TK can tease and rib into a reluctant smile, but an unrelenting frown and eyes sparking with hurt and resentment. It...TK does like it, doesn’t like that something hurt Patty this badly. She winces and curls away.

“Stop it,” Patty says.

“Stop what?”

“You know fucking well what, Travis.” The poison Patty manages to inject into her first name makes it feel like something is withering in her chest, but she pushes it down, brings up her own anger to match Patty’s.

“If this is about that shit with Wilson, I don’t see what the big deal was.”

“You don’t see what the big deal was? We lost our jammer for a full minute because of your vigilante ass!” Patty says and throws her hands up. “I don’t need you to fight my battles, Teeks, it’s fucking _roller derby_. I’m gonna get some bruises, that’s just how it _works_.”

And TK knows this, okay, TK’s been in fights on skates since before she knew it was a legit sport. That doesn’t mean that she wants to stand by and do nothing while Patty gets hurt.

“No one was calling Wilson’s elbow, Patty, you were being trampled like—”

“Just because you tie my skates for me doesn’t make you my mom!”

Like a shot, TK pushes herself up and into Patty’s face, the rubber stops of their skates jolting against each other. “Well shit, Nolan, I fucking well hope not!” she shouts, voice cracking. “I don’t want to be your mom, I want to be your—”

And all of a sudden, all of the anger and righteous fury drain out of TK only to be replaced by the rigor mortis of dread, the terrible feeling of being caught out. She fizzles out before she can commit, even as she feels the emotion and the need to be known rising up in her throat like the absolute worst case of food poisoning. She doesn’t have the words, or the bravery to use them because _fuck_ she and Pats just started talking on the phone, she doesn’t want to ruin everything.

Patty opens her mouth to bitch back at TK and then kind of...stops. She tilts her head to the side and stares down at TK, blue eyes electric in the warehouse lights as she seems to realize something. TK is caught between the need to remain unknown and the unbearable desire to be seen, if only so she doesn’t have to make the next move.

Finally, Patty’s shoulders loosen a little and she rolls her eyes and huffs, unsticking a strand of hair that had been caught in the corner of her mouth. Even with all of the emotions buzzing underneath her skin, TK finds her gaze caught on this small movement.

“I guess,” Patty starts, and sighs again, crossing and then uncrossing her arms. “I guess I know where you’re coming from. But babe,” and TK goes embarrassingly hot and tingly when she says this, “you gotta calm down. Don’t throw the bout away just because some asshat in red tripped me up. I don’t need some _obnoxious pipsqueak _standing up for me, you know?”

TK takes this for the peace offering it clearly is, going nearly limp in relief. “Yeah, yeah, Cinderella,” she says and nudges up against Patty’s hip. “I guess it’s not my fault that you can’t skate all that well. I can see all that pizza sitting on your thighs.”

“You wish _you_ were sitting on my thighs, Teeks,” Patty says and skates back to where G is frantically trying to corral everyone for a pep talk before the next half, as if she didn’t just casually ruin TK’s life.

Like, _yeah_, but she didn’t have to call TK out like that.

*** * ***

TK still ends up in the penalty box in their next bout against the Devil Dolls, but it can hardly be considered her fault for getting a little loose with her elbows when the other squad was clearly asking for it. Patty ends up in the box with her, and TK is more than ready to call foul if Patty gets pissy.

One of the non-skating officials has to wander off in search of a few extra folding chairs to seat all of the penalties, and TK takes the spare time to mouth off at 28 from the Devil Dolls, leaning in around Patty to make sure to get her point across. She gets rolled eyes for her trouble and number 45 hocks a red-tinged lugee to the ground in their direction.

“Fucking gross,” TK says appreciatively.

Once seated, Patty kicks a leg up over TK’s thighs proprietarily. TK’s hands automatically go to her skate laces. They pause, fluttering a little, when she finds the laces still tied tight.

“The shit is this?” TK asks, turning back to Patty. “They’re not even untied!”

“Well I guess you’re pretty good at it,” Patty says flatly, leaning back in her chair, like she uses TK as a footrest all the time.

Which, she does. Point to Patty.

“No fucking duh I am,” TK beams, and rests her hand on the fashnet mesh over Patty’s thighs until their penalty is over. Her palms burn the whole time.

*** * ***

“Hey,” TK says as she pulls the bow tight, “you _do_ know how to tie your own shoes, right?”

Patty’s quiet for long enough that TK starts to get worried about what goes on in that big head of hers. Maybe she actually doesn’t know how to tie a bow and is too proud to ask for help, and all of TK’s jokes take it too far. TK looks up to apologize just as Patty leans in and presses slightly chapped lips to hers.

She tastes like bubblegum, TK thinks, like some kind of goddamn idiot.

TK is still for a record of two seconds before her brain kicks back on and she leans in too, tilting her face until their noses brush together. Something light ripples through her and TK wants to be closer. Patty’s hand tickles at the baby hairs on the back of TK’s neck just below her ponytail and she shivers, mouth dropping open just long enough for Patty’s tongue to dart out against hers, and—

—and then suddenly TK’s lap is empty, and Patty’s skating away, throwing a smirk over her shoulder.

TK blinks once, twice, then shakes off her stupor and yells at Patty’s retreating ass, “That doesn’t answer the question, Pats!”

The pop of a bubblegum bubble is the only response she gets.

**Author's Note:**

> **q:** in what time period is this story set?  
**a:** the Beforetimes
> 
> **q:** what are tk and nopat's derby names?  
**a:** lil queen trashmouth and peg city pudding snatcher
> 
> catch me on the [tumbles](https://dalmatienne.tumblr.com/) where i am straight vibing


End file.
